Hi there,
So I have a windows surface book and need to run Linux on it for university, however, im stubborn and don't want to dual boot or only run Linux by itself, instead, I have a bootable USB drive that I used to test with linux mint, when formatted with FAT32 that worked fine, however I needed a more permanent soultion so I took an old m.2 SSD I had, put that in an external enclosure, formatted it to FAT32 and used universal usb installer to install the mint iso file. That worked fine and I can run linux mint on my laptop using this external SSD enclosure.
So whats the problem you ask? For some silly reason, windows or specifically surface can only boot from a usb formatted as FAT32, and as you know FAT32 only supports up to 4GB, which is pointless to be used on a 256gb drive and even more pointless to be used as a permanent Linux environment solution. My goal was to have this external 256gb SSD, and when I needed to run linux I just plugged it into my laptop, booted to it and had Linux without messing with the original drive on my laptop.
Do you know any soultion for booting from windows on a bootable usb other than FAT32? As others have said that UEFI cant boot from NTFS. Or is there something I can do to have my external SSD as a bootable linux enviorment.
Thanks for your time and help,
Cheers
So I have a windows surface book and need to run Linux on it for university, however, im stubborn and don't want to dual boot or only run Linux by itself, instead, I have a bootable USB drive that I used to test with linux mint, when formatted with FAT32 that worked fine, however I needed a more permanent soultion so I took an old m.2 SSD I had, put that in an external enclosure, formatted it to FAT32 and used universal usb installer to install the mint iso file. That worked fine and I can run linux mint on my laptop using this external SSD enclosure.
So whats the problem you ask? For some silly reason, windows or specifically surface can only boot from a usb formatted as FAT32, and as you know FAT32 only supports up to 4GB, which is pointless to be used on a 256gb drive and even more pointless to be used as a permanent Linux environment solution. My goal was to have this external 256gb SSD, and when I needed to run linux I just plugged it into my laptop, booted to it and had Linux without messing with the original drive on my laptop.
Do you know any soultion for booting from windows on a bootable usb other than FAT32? As others have said that UEFI cant boot from NTFS. Or is there something I can do to have my external SSD as a bootable linux enviorment.
Thanks for your time and help,
Cheers